Allright guys how to mod your Rampage Formula North bridge. What you will need to do play a game for 30 minutes will warm up the northbridge and southbridge making it easy for the RUBBER to come off (yes you will c what i mean by RUBBER when u remove the heatsink). No the northbridge heat sink is not attached to the mosfet heatsink it just sits above it. Northbridge has a backplate do no remove this first concintrate on southbridge push pins they are a bITCH to remove and also the heatsink wont slide onto the mobo destroying it somewhat. What you do to the southbridge is get pliers yes pliers use them to pull from above the pin and use finger nails to squeez the bottom so it goes threw the hole it takes some time so don't get pissed off relax make sure you are squeezing the pin from the bottom end of the motherboard or it wont come out. Once this is done you can move onto the northbridge. For that you just unscrew the screws use a magnet screw driver its easier n the screw wont fall onto the mobo. Allright this part we may have different experiances my northbdrige and southbridge just came off without any force at all:S do not rotate the heatsink bc u are ****** if u do (why u ask because the heat sink from the bottom is indented meaning the northbdrige and south bridge sit in a crater basically just like how the tip of a screw driver is interchangable and the pieces go into the screw driver that's how the heat sinks are). The past isnt even a paste its like a rubber mat and beneath that is some glue which comes off easily with some paper towel and rubbing alcohol the 99percent one. The heatsinks didnt have any past stuck to it. Apply what ever thermal paste you wish but it makes no big difference because I used arctic silver 5 and it didn't do much:( so get aftermarket chipset coolers. I havent tried a spot cooler but I touched the top of the heat sink after doing my little mod and its hottt and useless and I don't think a spot cooler will be that useful (will be using a chipset cooler in the future when I get some moneyyy). K I hope this helps ill post some pics but donno how that will go because im new to this stuff. Also I would just like to say that Asus RMA good luck they gonna bend you over an do nice things to u. You have to pay for shipping and fill in a form saying any damage to the mobo is your fault and u have to give a credit card number were u will b charged (shipping was over 100 **** that I hope they die:D)

first pic is arctive silver that i used applied with finger:D spent 8 hours lapping the thermalright ultra 120 got lazy on the cpu. Personally I don't think the lapping was worth knocking off a couple of extra degrees, don't do it!!!

The grey rubber in question *IS* actually a thermal interface.It's called "Sarcon TM".

The reason they use this instead of thermal paste , is to compensate for misalignment issues between the northbridge and southbridge (they use the same heatsink)..There is no way to guarantee that the NB and SB will be 'flat' in reference to each other , during the manufacturing process , so the sarcon fills the gaps.

If you are still using the stock NB/SB heatsink , I would pay very close attention to how well the heatsink mates to both chips.....Make sure it's sitting flat on both chips and not rocking etc....